OpenAI has brought back a five-hour usage cap for ChatGPT Plus subscribers. It applies to ChatGPT Work, the business-oriented assistant, and to Codex, the coding agent. The cap took effect on August 25 local time, and the Pro plans at 100 USD and 200 USD per month are left out for the time being. The limit had been removed in July, so it returns after roughly six weeks.

A five-hour window layered on top of the weekly one

Plus subscribers now sit under two different ceilings. The weekly allowance stays as it was, and the five-hour cap sits inside it as a second, tighter limit. The new rule does not replace the weekly quota; it adds another layer beneath it.

The five-hour window does not reset at a fixed hour of the day. It slides, counting usage over the most recent five hours. If you hit the ceiling, you do not have to wait for midnight. Access opens up again as older consumption falls out of the window.

That said, the cap bites hardest on bursty workloads. Pointing Codex at a large repository, or handing ChatGPT Work a long research run, and repeating that back to back, can exhaust the five-hour window well before the weekly allowance runs low.

OpenAI frames it as a fix for burning through the week

The change was announced by Thibault Sottiaux, technical lead for Codex and ChatGPT Work, in a post on X on August 24 stating the cap would return the following day.

His reasoning breaks into two parts. The first concerns compute. Spreading load across five-hour windows smooths out the peaks, which in turn makes it possible to keep the weekly allowance generous. The cap looks like a restriction, but the stated goal is to avoid cutting the weekly quota.

The second concerns user experience. Plus skews toward casual and newer subscribers, and Sottiaux noted that some of them were unknowingly consuming an entire week of capacity within a few hours. Discovering that the week is already spent is not a good experience, in his framing. The five-hour cap works as something closer to a speed bump.

From removal in July to a partial reversal

The policy has changed direction more than once in recent months. The five-hour limit was dropped on July 12, and at that point Plus, Pro and Business were all covered by the removal. From then on, only the weekly allowance mattered.

A notice on July 28 said the cap would return the next day, but the rollout was then postponed. That left a gap of about six weeks between removal and reinstatement. This time the scope has been narrowed, and only Plus gets the cap back.

What the Pro exemption signals

Leaving Pro out draws a clear line between the tiers. Plus costs 20 USD per month (about 3,200 yen), while Pro comes in two levels at 100 USD (about 16,000 yen) and 200 USD (about 32,000 yen). How freely you can work in short, intense bursts now tracks what you pay.

1 USD = 159 JPY (as of August 26, 2026)

The exemption is phrased as not applying for the coming months, not as a permanent carve-out. OpenAI has left room to reassess once it sees how the cap behaves on Plus. For anyone running Codex daily, that is one more variable to weigh when choosing a plan.

Summary

Starting August 25, ChatGPT Plus subscribers face a five-hour cap on ChatGPT Work and Codex again. It runs alongside the weekly allowance as a sliding window. OpenAI describes the goal as smoothing compute load so the weekly quota can stay generous, and as preventing users from unintentionally spending a full week of capacity in a single sitting. Pro is exempt for now, but the exemption is not described as permanent.